Outback Fire

Outback Fire
Margaret Way

Tempestuous StormMcFarlane had declared open war on her rival, Luke Branagan, her father's adopted son. Luke was the one being groomed to handle the vast family cattle empire and this had ultimately driven Storm away from Winding River. She would find recognition and a new life in the city.Still, she longed for her life in the Outback. So when Luke insisted she visit her ailing father, she agreed to go - only to discover that her powerful feelings for this commanding usurper had subtly shifted from hurt anger to intense desire….

“I used to hero-worship you,” Storm found herself saying haltingly.

“Then all at once things changed,” Luke replied. “I’m here for you, Storm. Any chance we could start again?”

“No, I just can’t,” she said in a passion. “Too many years have gone by.”

“What are you frightened of, Storm? Why are you so frightened of me?”

“Such arrogance!” Her voice rang out caustically. “I’m not frightened of you at all. What do I have to do to prove it?” She stood there in an attitude of defiance he had witnessed countless times over.

“Why don’t you let me show you?”

“Don’t you dare touch me, Luke,” she warned.

He gave a challenging shake of his head. “I’m genuinely amazed I haven’t tried it before. For years you were too young, but you’re old enough now.”

Margaret Way takes great pleasure in her work and works hard at her pleasure. She enjoys tearing off to the beach with her family at weekends, loves haunting galleries and auctions and is completely given over to French champagne “for every possible joyous occasion.” She was born and educated in the river city of Brisbane, Australia, and now lives within sight and sound of beautiful Moreton Bay.

Outback Fire

Margaret Way

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

THEY rode out at dawn. Their mission was specific. To hunt down “Psycho” the wild bull camel that was harassing the herd and attacking anybody unfortunate enough to come on it unawares. The situation had become so dangerous it was now necessary to kill the beast. Only a few days before one of the stockmen mustering clean skins on the desert fringe had encountered the raging animal and paid the price. Psycho had attacked without provocation kicking the stockman in the chest. The consequences had been serious. The man had to be airlifted to hospital and was still in a critical condition. He would have been dead only for the arrival of three of his mates who had startled the ferocious beast into slewing off.

When the rogue came on season, for it was the male camel instead of the female that came on heat, Psycho would pose even more of a threat. He had a fearful reputation for attacking other male camels with passionate fury, his strength and wildness driving them away to leave him with a harem usually twenty or more females he jealously guarded and impregnated.

Of recent times Psycho had taken to making open-mouthed dives at the tribal people who crisscrossed the station on walkabout. McFarlane had been informed of the attacks. His people were frightened and wanted protection.

Camels weren’t indigenous to Australia. They and their Afghan handlers had been imported into the country in the early days of settlement to transport goods all over the dry trackless regions of the Outback; camels were ideal beasts of burden in just such conditions. Their wild descendants, some quarter of a million and they lived several decades, were a dreadful menace. They roamed the desert from one end to the other doing considerable damage to the fragile environment. McFarlane tolerated them. By now they were part of the Outback and there was a certain romance to the sight of them silhouetted on top of a sand dune at sunset. Unfortunately the time had come for Psycho to be destroyed before he turned killer.

Six of them made up the party that morning. McFarlane, his overseer, Chas Branagan, Garry Dingo, the station’s finest tracker, two of his best stockmen and the boy, Luke. Fourteen years old but already judged by the others to be a man. The boy stood six feet, a superb athlete, with an excellent head on his shoulders. He was a fine shot, a talent he had been born with, as well as having extraordinary endurance for his age. In fact he was well on his way to becoming a consummate bushman like his father, Chas. He had the same remarkable sight, hearing and sense of smell. Skills that would be needed on the hunt.

McFarlane realised he had become very fond of the boy. Indeed he was coming to look on him as the son he might have had. The tragedy was his wife; the one woman he had ever truly loved had died in childbirth leaving him with the precious legacy of a daughter. His beautiful Storm. While her mother slipped prematurely out of life, Storm had come into the world at the height of one of the fiercest tempests that had ever passed over his land.

Tragedy and triumph. Sometimes the two went hand in hand. Like Storm and high drama. Storm had never been an easy child. Tempestuous and outspoken she spent her young life rebelling against his dictates when he had only put them in place to protect her. Freedom was what she wanted. Total freedom. The right to roam the station at will. “Like Luke does.” That was the catch cry “Like Luke does.”

There were always outbursts against Luke. Big flare-ups of jealousy and resentment.

“You treat him like a son! He’s not your son. He’s not my brother.”

How many times had he heard that? Storm fought his affection for Luke every step of the way. She overplayed her little princess and the pauper act most times the two of them were together. Luke being Luke, was gentle and tolerant with her, unfazed by her histrionics.

As for Storm, the light of his life, didn’t she know her father adored her? When Storm was sweet, she was very, very sweet, irresistible like her mother. If she’d had her way she’d have joined them this morning. Imagine! A girl barely twelve, even if she could ride all day. Storm couldn’t accept the confines of her femininity. She lived in a man’s world and she wasn’t about to come to terms with it. His difficult little Storm. How could it be otherwise? This was a child reared without a mother’s gentling touch.

They skirted around the lignum that rose up like jungle walls, the party dividing up as they rode into the desert, ringed by heat waves that danced in the blinding glare. No tracks so far but then they had to contend with the rising wind that wiped them out almost as soon as they were made. Such a place of desolation this no man’s land! The great flights of budgerigar that flashed green and gold overhead and the marauding hawks were almost the only living things. The grazing cattle had stripped the perennial cover from the slopes here and the blood-red sand moved at will.

Sand and spinifex.

This year of drought, even the spinifex wasn’t so dense. Other years it covered the sand like a bright golden carpet.

After two hours or more of fruitless search the party broke up, frustrated but not willing to give up. Psycho should have been spottable but he wasn’t. Wild animals had a way of disappearing into the landscape. Chas and two of the stockmen took off for the low eroded foothills, shimmering in the quicksilver light of the mirage. McFarlane, Luke and Matt, the other stockman, worked the undulating dunes, so red they were alight. It was getting hotter and hotter, the sun scorching out of a cloudless blue sky. So hot in fact McFarlane knew he was losing concentration. Not yet fifty he had lived a hard, dangerous life, and it was taking its toll. Broken ribs, a bad leg injury years back in Vietnam that still gave him a lot of pain especially if he was too long in the saddle. A tired man became careless. Matt had dropped back, skirting the mounds of dried up springs. He rode ahead with Luke a few feet from his shoulder.

Everything was silence. Infinity. The blood-red dunes ran on forever in great parallel waves; the tall seed stems of the spinifex called up glittering aboriginal spears. Nothing to signal the presence of the camel as it watched them, its shaggy, dull ginger coat an excellent camouflage. It stood within its crude shelter of desert acacias, its dark crested humped outline hidden by the thick gnarled trunks and weight of branches. McFarlane saw the wild camel as his quarry. Psycho in a particularly vicious mood saw McFarlane as his.

With extraordinary cunning the rogue camel waited for the optimum moment to break cover. It gathered itself for the charge then galloped directly at McFarlane with terrifying speed, its hump grown massive over the years, swaying, drumming through its nostrils its blind rage at the threat to its territory. In the crystal clear air of the desert the sound was deafening, travelling far. McFarlane slumped half sideways in the saddle trying to ease the pain in his leg, felt the hairs at the back of his neck stand up. For an instant he was deadly afraid then he wheeled his horse sharply but that stout hearted animal quailed in the face of the camel’s blazing charge. It reared then thundered to the ground throwing the unsettled McFarlane out of the saddle and onto the sun-baked earth.

The boy, Luke, looked on in horror, a cry caught in his throat. For a split second he was frozen, then all thoughts of his own safety left him. He was ice cool, bracing himself for what lay ahead. This wasn’t anything he couldn’t handle. Every lost second almost certainly meant tragedy. There was only time for one shot. It had to be perfect. Clean. Humane. Conclusive.

Eye to the sight, finger on the trigger Luke waited…waited…his handsome young face strong and resolute. He was already beginning to squeeze the trigger. The camel was slobbering hugely, saturated in foaming fury. Its rank smell pervaded the air.

The shot cracked away echoing across the desert and bouncing off the boulders strewn about like giants’ marbles. The camel died in mid-flight. It crashed to the ground, thrashed for an aftermoment then rolled motionless to one side, its body making a deep impression in the sand.

Urgently Luke dismounted and rushed to McFarlane’s prone figure. Perfectly in control one minute, he was now uncertain. Anxiously he went down on one knee, eyes checking. “Mr. McFarlane?” he cried hoarsely. Every last man, woman and child on the vast station depended on this man. To many of them he was their guardian.

McFarlane lay for a moment, racked in pain and panting, thick dark hair and deeply tanned skin clogged with red dust, his grey akubra lying a foot away. Eventually, with air in his lungs, he managed a quiet “I’m fine, boy. Fine. No need to worry. That was a close one.”

Luke nodded, shoving his hat to the back of his dark auburn head. “Any closer and you’d have been trampled.” Now the danger was over, his voice broke with emotion.

“No way! Not with you around. You’re a man and I’m proud of you.”